Membase Server is Now Couchbase Server

This is my first blog posting at Couchbase – and one I’m very happy to be writing! Today we shipped Couchbase Server 1.8, culminating a tremendous amount of work since I joined Couchbase three months ago. Before getting in to the details about the release, I want to say hello to the Couchbase community. I’m excited to be at Couchbase.

Membase Server is Now Couchbase Server

In December our CEO, Bob Wiederhold, announced that Membase Server would be rechristened Couchbase Server in January 2012. Today we made good on that promise.

Couchbase Server 1.8 replaces Membase Server 1.7 as our “flagship” database offering. In addition to the obvious rebranding, we’ve made substantial improvements in the cluster rebalancing process and fixed a number of nagging issues in 1.7. We encourage all our users to move to release 1.8. You can refer to Alex Ma’s post on upgrading Couchbase Server.

In addition to the server enhancements, we’ve invested very heavily on the client side. You can read about it in Matt Ingenthron’s blog on Client Libraries for Couchbase Server, in which discusses all the things we released today: updated client libraries, documentation, tutorials and samples for Java, C#/.NET, C/C++, Ruby and PHP. Python is on the way. Of course, one of the coolest things about Couchbase Server is its 100% on-the-wire protocol compatibility with Memcached for which there are literally hundreds of client libraries supporting just about every language and framework that’s ever been built. So while our SDKs offer a highly polished developer experience, you may not even need to change your application if it already uses memcached and you’d like to try out Couchbase.

You can also help take steps towards a greener future. With every registration of Couchbase Server 1.8.0 Enterprise Edition, we will plant a tree. Download Couchbase Server and give it a try today.

What’s next?

The next major feature release of Couchbase Server is release 2.0. Currently available as Developer Preview 3, this release adds tremendous functionality inherited from our integration of Apache CouchDB technology into Couchbase Server. New features include indexing, materialized views, query support, incremental map-reduce and multi-datacenter support. We also have SDKs available that support the new 2.0 features if you want to give them a try.

For users entering production with 1.8, there will be a seamless upgrade path to 2.0 which we expect to ship in production-certified form in the first half of this year.

Excited to be at Couchbase!

In late October 2011, I joined Couchbase as Sr. Product Manager for our database server products. I came to Couchbase from MarkLogic, a Big Data database company, which I joined after spending five years with IBM in their DB2 database group.

To me and all my colleagues in the database community, it has become quite clear that the industry is shifting from relational to non-relational technologies. This transition is not a fad. It is being driven by fundamental changes in the way applications are being built and deployed, the audiences they serve and the resulting impact on the economics of operating these applications. For me, joining Couchbase was a no-brainer – I want to be part of shaping this industry transformation. In my search process, I concluded that Couchbase was the startup with the best chance of leading the charge – right team, right technology, strong funding.

So that’s it from me. I really look forward to getting to know our users and if you have any suggestions, complaints or concerns about our product direction, please let me know.

Posted by The Couchbase Team

Jennifer Garcia is a Senior Web Manager at Couchbase Inc. As the website manager, Jennifer has overall responsibility for the website properties including design, implementation, content, and performance.